[wdmmg-discuss] How much does the UK government pay OKFN?

[William Waites]

http://openspending.org/dataset/ukdepartments/entries?filter-to.label_facet=OPEN+KNOWLEDGE+FOUNDATION+LIMITED

About 70k. Given the amount of work OKF has done on data.gov.uk and
the UK location programme this number seems very surprisingly low.

The possibilities are:

  - That actually is the correct number
  - The data and / or query on UK government spending is
    inaccurate or incomplete
  - That OKF holds a significant amount of UK government
    debt

Would be curious to know which is the case.

If the latter is the case this throws a very big question on all of
the published spending data. Accounting is usually done on an accrual
basis not a cash basis. In my country only farmers are allowed to use
cash accounting and only then if their income is below a certain
level.

So by financing its operations with debt either by delaying payment of
invoices or explicitly structuring working arrangements in a suitable
way, economic activity can be kept off the published ledgers, at least
for a certain period of time. This seriously distorts the financial
picture of the UK government.

If the data is incomplete or inaccurate, why bother publishing it at
all? In that case it is just misleading.

If the 70k number is correct, then I'm just surprised :)

-w
-- 
William Waites                <mailto:ww at styx.org>
http://river.styx.org/ww/        <sip:ww at styx.org>
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